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Sinergy -> RE: Fish illness Question (12/4/2006 6:08:26 PM)
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Hello A/all,
In a former life, I ran a business as an Aquarium cleaner / installer sort of person and have had aquariums most of my life.
I will start off by saying that I will send flowers to Mopsy or Eustace or whatever the little bloated fish is named.
Your fish tank is a closed system which is stable (or not) based on the chemical levels in the water. If you have a lot of water (I generally would not own a tank less than 200 gallons) or fish (like African Cichlids) which allow you to spill your clorox in the tank and they dont care, you will occaisionally lose fish but in general they will be very happy.
The cool thing about Cichlids is when one of them becomes sick, the other fish in the tank name him Lunch. Problem solved.
What people typically do is see Fluffy all bloated, and throw in medication to kill whatever ails Fluffy, based on the advice of the people at Petco. This is all well and good, except the medication kills all the bacteria (nitrogen fixing) in your filter beds and gravel which convert urine and fecal matter from ammonia to nitrates to nitrites and nitrogen gas and oxygen and eventually get rid of what will mess up your chemical levels. I might have nitrites and nitrates backwards, one is NO2 and one is NO3.
This is not really a problem in 200 gallons of water, since fish generally do not really defecate enough to cause a problem. Bacteria has this strange tendency to not die off completely and rebuild their populations in short order, easier in a large volume of water than a small one. But in a small tank with the fish crapping and the like, now you have a tank of fish with compromised immune systems from water quality issues and all sorts of lovely new illnesses cropping up.
I never medicated my tank. Skittles gets sick. Hasta la vista, baby. But then, the carnage in my tank was so extensive (the aquarium store guy would sell me fish saying they would survive my gore-fest, and of all the ones he recommended the strongest ones lasted 4 days even though they were 2x the size, and a school of 5, than the cichlids) and my fish were generally so healthy that it was not a big problem. I love cichlids.
Well, my 23 inch Arowana was kinda fun too, although he and the red eared slider turtle used to come to blows. The turtle would piss off the Arowana, who would strike him like a snake and knock him against the glass of the tank. After which the turtle would look at the Arowana, presumably thinking "Dude, Im wearing armor, are you a moron?"
Perhaps I anthropomorphize my pets a bit too much.
Feeding night was a party with friends and beer. There would be betting. Sometimes I would invite them over when I rearranged the rocks. Nobody in the tank died, usually, but the next 3 days would be epic battles while they reestablished their territories.
The other thing they will tell you to do is put Rover in an isolation tank, generally a 1 gallon aquarium they sell you. You medicate this tank. There is never a functional filter bed, and Rover does the Big Float because of all the wastes not being taken care of.
If your fish are getting ill, I would suggest that you might be feeding them too much. Cut it back some, or get another filter to suck up the excess goo. A good rule to follow is to feed your fish a pinch or two at a time, and stop feeding them when the first bit of food touches the bottom of the tank.
Good luck!
Sinergy
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